Chapter 21 Skipper
SKIPPER
They breed like cane toads, hopping from every direction toward us. We filter into the warehouse with guns and knives, aiming blindly at opponents since our eyes haven’t yet adjusted.
After a few minutes of firing bullets and dodging others, I eventually begin to see. The warehouse is how I imagine black holes in space to look—no end in sight, producing nothing but destruction.
“I see him,” Vex shouts between shots.
I turn my head and see Carter barreling over to Otis. He cuts through the ropes that bind him to the chair, picks the small child up and hauls him over his shoulder, making for the exit.
He moves two steps.
And then comes into contact with a masked O’Neill.
Carter plummets to the ground, and his opponent takes the boy back over to his chair. He’s far enough away for the bullets to not hit him. For now.
Anger rushes through my veins. The O’Neills are well and truly psycho. To sit a two-year-old boy down in the face of a gun fight, you have to be dead inside.
I lower my gun and chamber a round of bullets, preparing for the massacre.
Watching Carmen walk into the warehouse earlier was more painful than receiving a bullet wound. She was screaming Otis’s name, and all I wanted to do was hurl in and save the pair of them.
I got as far as the barbed wire when three O’Neill men obstructed my path, each holding a gun. They didn’t shoot. They didn’t get time to. I slipped the butcher knife from my pocket and thrust it straight into the middle one’s heart.
Vex and Carter took care of the other two.
Wiping my blade clean afterward in the grass, I realized something huge—how much I enjoyed that. I’ve killed over the years, but that was always for someone else. It was duty, part of the job that came with being an outlaw biker.
But earlier tonight, I discovered a new passion.
It feels good to kill in order to save someone you love. Someone worth sticking around for. Someone who’s profound enough in your life to make confronting the demons worth it.
I hear them now in my head, questioning why I’m doing this.
It’s easier to leave.
It’s always easier to leave.
Go back to Monterey, de-anchor your boat and set sail.
Feel the wind combing through your hair again.
Taste the sea salt on your tongue.
Hold the sextant in your hand and let the world be your oyster.
Don’t die for one woman when millions are still yet to be discovered. You have countries to see. New seas to sail.
I fixate the gun in my hand and fire with a steady hand. A man drops dead in front of me, his chest becoming a wine-red color as the blood gushes out of his heart. It’s the most color I’ve seen on men like him since stepping foot into this place.
I keep a watchful eye on Otis and make sure nobody is sneaking him away. I have a responsibility to protect both of them. I want to stick around and be involved in their lives.
Growing up parentless scares you out of wanting to become one yourself.
But seeing Otis being exposed to all of this violence makes me want to be a father, to be there for the nightmares when they inevitably come, to show him that the world doesn’t have to be the same one I grew up living in.
I stride forward and steal my dead opponent’s gun. Now with a gun in each hand, I feel unstoppable. I shoot down more men and climb over dead ones to reach the lucky few who are still on their feet.
Our backup arrives at the right time, joining the scene, all guns blazing, to kill more of the rodents. More seem to appear out of nowhere, as if they have the magic ability to regenerate and climb back onto their feet.
“Carmen,” Vex mumbles to me when we’re back to being shoulder-to-shoulder. “I’ll ward the O’Neills off with the others. You go and find her.”
The rusting shipping containers must contain something. I map a route and start heading over there. The walk is interrupted several times. I dive to the floor, army-crawl for a meter, and scramble back up to my feet. And repeat the above multiple times.
On my fourth repeat, army-crawling through a tangle of legs, I see Carter’s face.
He’s down.
Bad.
“Shit,” I curse, fighting my way over to him.
His teeth are gritted in agony, eyes opening and closing as the pain crashes over him. I peel back his eyelid and whack his face.
“Now’s not a good time for you to think about dying, mate.”
His pupils roll back into his head.
After a few more slaps to his face, I manage to recenter them.
“Stop fucking around. This doesn’t end until we have Otis and Carmen.”
“You got any fucking acetaminophen? Or morphine?” He gestures weakly over to his thigh, where a bullet has shot straight into his leg.
The wound is weeping with a concerning substance. And way too much blood. There’s a worrying pool of it on the floor.
And that’s when I see a second bullet wound further down on his calf.
“Both…still inside.”
“There’s no time to remove the bullets now.” I survey my own bloody hands. “They’ll get infected.”
“Might be…t-too late for that.” Carter unclenches his jaw, his eyelids shutting again.
Fuck. Not Otis’s biological father.
I slap his face again and manage to reclaim his attention…until an opponent finds the pair of us on the floor and decides he’s going to yank Carter up.
He fails miserably—Carter is three times the size of this man.
So, he slips his gun instead.
“No,” a second opponent interjects. “Don’t waste your bullets. He’ll be dead shortly.” He removes his mask to flash me a wink.
I take out my gun and shoot the bastard dead in the eye before he has time to open it again. Blood splatters, landing on my face. The metallic taste of it combines with the salty taste of my own sweat.
I lick my lips—this is exactly what violence is supposed to taste like.
“Carter?” screams a female voice. One that belongs to Carmen. Her broken cadence almost ruins me.
“Sit tight,” I say to Carter before darting away in the direction of her voice.
On route to the shipping container, I grab Otis and fling the crying boy over my shoulder, hoping to avoid the fate that has taken Carter.
I shoot into the shipping container and lock eyes with her.
And that’s when the real fun begins.
“Take Otis and the others. Get the hell out of here!” she screams.
“Carmen—”
“Don’t argue with me. Conrad isn’t gonna stop. It’s me he wants. Otis was just an extra.”
“An extra?”
“I need you to go. Before he kills you all and leaves Otis without his fathers.”
“He needs his mother, Carmen.”
The hurt is all over her face, dampening features I once remember being radiant. “He doesn’t. I’m gonna ruin him.”
“If you think you can let that manipulative cunt get into your head, you’ve already let him win.”
She doesn’t get to decide if she wants to stay here or not. I take the knife from under my belt and saw away the zip ties, one at a time until she falls flush into my arms.
She weighs less than a feather and she’s not even been here for an hour. A gash is on her cheek, a streak of blood dripping down from her eyebrow. One of them has been cut open. Intentional or not, it doesn’t matter. Conrad will take her and ruin her.
And if he does that, I head back to Monterey and set sail.
Because she’s the only thing here that makes me want to stay.
I kiss her chastely on the temple and throw her over my shoulder, somehow managing to hold both Carmen and Otis. It’s getting quieter outside, and that unsettles me.
If Carter looked like he was hanging onto life by a thread before, I dread to think what state he’s in now.
“Please,” she begs. I ignore her request to set her back down—she doesn’t know what the fuck she’s saying. “You don’t understand. I’m the same as her. I’ll ruin him. And he’ll keep coming back.”
Some names would be nice. But I think she’s past the point of speaking in full sentences.
We exit the shipping container—Otis in one arm, Carmen slumped over the other. The warehouse is no longer teeming with men like before. Most of them are dead. It’s a pleasant sight for me, but a terrible one for the infant on my arm.
I bring him to my chest, his face tucked into me. But the damage has already been done. It’s gonna take a lifetime to heal this child.
And that’s why he needs all the help he can get.
Not just from the three of us. This boy needs his mother too.
Carmen sucks in a rattly breath like she herself is on the verge of death. The horror in her eyes is wide, her jaw quivering open as she plays dot-to-dot with the hundred or so dead bodies littered across the ground.
“Some of the bikers…” Her eyes stop over one particular corpse who’s wearing a jacket with the Venom Vultures sigil. “Not…”
I cast my eyes over to Carter who is still in the same hopeless position as before. I race over to him with an idea. If he can see Carmen’s face, maybe he’ll actually start fighting for his life. There’s still plenty of him left in there to survive this.
“Oh my god.” Carmen places a trembling hand over her mouth. She starts to malfunction. A string of words fall out of her mouth, missing a few verbs and conjunctions. She eventually finds the right words. “Please don’t die on me.” She grabs his hand and shakes it frantically. “Please. I love you.”
It comes out as a whisper but it’s loud.
Loud enough to quiet every single man on earth.
“I love you too.” The best Carter can do is give her hand a little squeeze.
Pathetic. I’ve seen the bastard endure a bullet to the arm, seen him sucker punch two enemies to the ground at once. He can get over himself and stop being such a pussyhole.
“We should get out of here,” Vex says, joining in on the fun. “I can’t find Conrad.” He flicks his eyes down to Carter and tenses up. “Shit.”
“Attention-seeking bastard,” I growl. “He’ll be fine. But we need to get Carter to a hospital. It’s gonna be a two-man job to get him out of here. Carmen—grab Otis and take the lead. Let’s get out of here before sunrise.”
“You heard what I said before,” she says. “Look what I’ve done to Carter. You’ll end up the same if you keep protecting me.”